The ubiquity and versatility of the Internet continues to spur the development of information management applications. Software products such as HyperOffice, Dropbox, BOX, and OpenText Tempo™ provide users with the ability to save and share documents in a Web (cloud) based storage container here they and other invited users can access these documents. In such products, a user may select and save a copy of a document from storage locations on their local computer or network or Document Management System (DMS) to a container located on the Web, where they can later access it from any device over the Internet or share it with others.
While such products provide remote access to documents, and consumer lever users find this functionality useful, they do not provide enough versatility and security needed for business professionals sharing information on the Internet. Security, risk and compliance professionals shy away from “documents in the cloud”. For example, conventional systems do not allow for the option for a document owner to send to a reviewer only a link to a document that allows a reviewer limited access to the document during a session with the Web-based service. Nor do such systems prevent the reviewer from maintaining a copy of the document after the session ends. Such systems further do not offer options for collaborating on project folders that offer reviewer-specific access to documents in the folders.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system that provides collaboration between information owners and reviewers while enabling owners to maintain control over original documents.